


Games Beyond the Game

by Gileonnen



Category: The Wire
Genre: Canon-Typical Homophobia, Child's Play - Freeform, Complicated Consent, Gifts and Obligations, M/M, Male Bonding via Pornography, Mentions of Domestic Partner Abuse, Secret Handshakes, Shoe Kissing, Street Corner War Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:40:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Was it the rep? Was it so our names could ring out on some ghetto street corner? Naw, man. There's games beyond the game." Avon and Stringer make a game of trading gifts as they grow up together on Butch Stamford's streets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Games Beyond the Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



It's Avon who starts their game.

On December 14th of their fifth grade year, he shuffles up beside Russ in the hall and shifts a package from palm to palm. Even without looking, Russ can tell a few things about it: square, wrapped in paper and that chalky-textured tape on every teacher's desk. "It ain't Christmas yet," he says, instead of _Thank you_ or _Hello._

Avon shrugs, and they're close enough that Russ feels it in his own shoulder. "Think my mom's gonna take us somewhere. She been putting clean clothes in a laundry bag."

"Your old man notice?"

"No, he ain't noticed. He got his head in the game." His eyes are serious, composed and calm the way they never are in second-period math class. He says _the game_ like he's already a sworn soldier in Butch Stamford's war -- like when he returns to the terraces, he'll fall back into line with the rest of the troops.

Russ sticks the box in his coat pocket. It barely fits. It sticks out from his hip like a tumor, unyielding under his fingertips even with the coat's padding to blunt it. "Guess I'll owe you."

"Nah, I stole it," Avon says, laughing. "Didn't cost me."

"Then I'll steal you something."

"You sure?"

"Sure. Ain't nothing."

They shake hands as though they've concluded some kind of business, wrist sliding down to palm, fingers flicking together for a whisper of a second before the first bell of the day breaks them apart.

In homeroom, Russ picks off fortified layers of tape and dollar store wrapping paper until he gets his present free. When he's finished, the Rubik's cube lies in a nest of shredded paper -- pristine, waiting to become a puzzle. He cranks it at random and listens to the click for long, wondering minutes, until the homeroom teacher plucks it from his fingers. "Do your homework, Mister Bell," she chides, and slides the cube into her desk drawer.

When he sneaks into her room during lunch to take it back, it's already gone.

*

Avon's mom brings him and Bri back to the terraces in the middle of March. She looks better, Russ thinks -- hair straightened and shining like polished mahogany, high heels and hose without runs. Less makeup, but then she has less to cover up.

Avon looks worse, and Russ can't say why. His clothes are clean. There are no new scars on him. He looks just like he did back in December, except with all the lights turned out inside like he's pretending no one's home.

"Gotta get back in the game," Avon says, the first time he and Russ shake wrist to hand. They linger there, palm to palm, reluctant to slide back and hook their fingers together. The longer they hold the handshake, the harder it is to pretend they aren't holding hands like they're each other's last lifelines.

Russ lets go eventually and puts his hands in his pockets. It doesn't make him feel any better to have them tucked away. "Your mom gonna take him back?"

"Ain't like she got a choice."

"You always got a choice."

"She don't." Avon scuffs the cement with the toe of his shoe and kicks all the way to the stairwell. There's a puddle of urine in one corner, just starting to crust at the edges. "Hey, you ever steal me something, like you said? You remember --"

"Yeah, I remember. Didn't think you would."

"Nah, man, I love free shit. Been looking forward to this since Christmas."

"Well, come on." They climb the stairs together, the stairwell ringing around them. The cinderblock should swallow up the sound, but instead it amplifies every slammed door and every footfall until the whole building seems to vibrate.

_This is what Avon wanted to come back to. These piss-streaked projects. The corner hustlers and the dope fiends._

_Me and Wee-Bey and the rest of our crew._

They get out on Russ's floor, crossing the puke-green hall tiles to his door. He keys it open and leads Avon to his room, then roots around in a pile of tattered books until he finds his prize. It's buried under the _Two Treatises of Government_ and Plato's _Republic_ , deep enough that his mom doesn't get suspicious and ask where he got the money to buy it. Looking at the size of it, Russ still can't quite make out how he sneaked it out under his coat.

"If you stole me a fucking book," begins Avon, but Russ only plasters on a grin as he presses last year's _Superman vs. Muhammad Ali_ into Avon's hands.

"No, fool, I stole you a fucking comic book."

For a split second, when Avon's eyes light up, he looks like the boy Russ used to know.

*

They never steal each other anything expensive, after that. A pack of cigarettes for Avon in eighth grade, and a sleek silver Zippo to go with them. A Walkman for Russ, with two headphone jacks so they could listen together if either of them owned an 8-track. A badminton set for Avon, not like they have anywhere to string it up and play but the lawns of the low-rises.

A set of new strings for Russ's first good pair of leather shoes. "Those shoe store bitches got eyes in the back of their heads," Avon complains when he hands them over. "I ain't had half this trouble getting a Walkman. From now on, you be your own stringer."

The name sounds badass, so Russ steals that, too.

*

Butch puts Avon on a corner before they're out of school, and he leaves him there without a piece for three goddamn years. "Gotta see if you ready for the game," Butch says, when Wee-Bey gets brought up to the pit and Avon has the gall to ask why he was passed over. "You run the corner right, the terraces run themselves."

"Can't run the corners right if you don't have a piece," Avon complains, but only where Stringer can hear.

Stringer has a half-legitimate job behind the counter of a corner store, looking the other way when his boss takes billfolds under the counter and passes back Berettas. Out of the game, but not so far out that he doesn't know where the score stands. He spends his free hours sitting on a stoop near Avon's corner, reading _The Wealth of Nations_ while he listens to Avon coaxing a few more bucks out of a dope fiend.

His last paycheck bought him a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses. The words on the pages are clearer now, but so are the discarded needles and condoms on the streets.

"You could run this corner like a legitimate business," he says, when Avon comes back to the stoop to hunker down. One step up from Stringer, so that anyone who looks will see where he sits in the pecking order. "Ain't no call for a piece if you keep good records, keep an eye on the market."

"There's a war going on for these corners," says Avon. He shakes his head as though he's trying to shake something free. "Soldier don't take a record into battle."

"Only a war 'cause Butch made it a war."

The lines on Avon's face are clearer, too. His eyes have gone hard and flat, pouched underneath from squinting. "We're in it now, though."

Stringer isn't sure why, but it changes everything to hear that Avon thinks he's in it, too.

*

Avon has his own place now, a one-room walkup glorified with white shag rugs and cracked leather couches from Goodwill. The paint on the walls is peeling and the drywall's gouged down to the insulation in places, but he's covered most of the big holes with centerfolds. Girls with teardrop tits and leather underwear smile invitingly on every wall, big natural hair and smooth legs.

Stringer leans on the doorframe with a brown paper bag in one hand and remarks, "You bring a girl back here, and she's gonna get performance anxiety."

"Merry fucking Christmas to you, too, cocksucker," laughs Avon, clasping Stringer's wrist to drag him into an embrace. "Where's Bey at?"

Stringer can't hold back a shit-eating grin. "De'Londa's place."

Avon claps him on the back a little too hard, then pulls him into the apartment. "We are two sad-ass bachelors, String."

"Cheer up, I stole you something from the video store." Stringer offers the paper bag, which Avon takes and unpeels to reveal the box inside.

The girl on the cover stands with her ass jutting out, her chest half turned to show the edge of a breast. She hooks a thumb in her sheer panties to draw them an inch or two down her hip. Her lips are barely parted, ready to wrap around a cock.

Her smile doesn't promise pleasure. It promises secrecy, and that's better.

Avon slides the video free of the cardboard sleeve, letting it lie in his palm like a slab of jet. "I'm trying to think how it's supposed to cheer me up, getting me pussy I can't taste," he says eventually. He turns on the TV, though, and he sticks the tape in the VCR.

While the opening plays, Stringer goes to the kitchen cabinet and takes down drinks to mix. Soda to make the whiskey stretch, ice to make the glass feel full. Glasses, because it's Christmas Eve and it's been a bitch of a year.

"Butch has me making a run to Philadelphia," says Stringer as he seats himself on one side of the couch.

"You on the front lines now." Avon already has his fly undone, but he reaches over for his whiskey soda and takes a long swallow. "You need someone to ride shotgun?"

"I need someone I trust giving the orders, that's what I need." Stringer spreads his legs and works his jeans open. The button and zipper are still cold from the air outside. "You gonna make your play, or what?"

On the screen, the woman unclasps her bra and lets her breasts fall free. She kneads them with her palms, plucks her nipples between thumb and forefinger.

"You gonna have my back?" Avon asks. His voice is thick. It might be the whiskey, or the way the woman moans as she slides one hand down between her legs. Easier to believe that than to wonder if it's the anticipation of grief.

Butch Stamford made Avon who he is, as much as Stringer ever did.

Stringer sets his glass aside and comes over to kneel at Avon's feet. The shag rug is uneven under his knees. It will leave marks, even through his jeans. "You go to hell, B, and I'm gonna be right behind you the whole way."

 _Oh, yeah,_ croons the woman on the TV, at Stringer's back. _Oh, my pussy's so wet._

"Get up, String. Less you plan on giving me head." When Avon puts a hand on his shoulder, though, it feels like it's meant to keep him down.

"This is a fucking gesture of fealty, you ignorant cocksucker."

Avon's fingers dig into Stringer's trapezius muscle, not quite hard enough to hurt. He drains his glass down to the clinking ice cubes and then sets it aside. "What the fuck is fealty?"

"Loyalty, man. You tell me where to go, and I follow you."

 _Please, baby, I want your big dick inside me,_ says the woman. There's a tremor in her voice that sends a charge right to Stringer's cock. "We come up together," Avon says. His eyes are glazed, though, his jaw hanging slack. "You and me."

"Gotta be someone on the throne."

"Don't mean you gotta kneel."

"No one else gonna get down on their knees if you can't get me on mine. They all know we come up together. They're all looking to me to see which way I jump, so when you say jump, I'll be there saying, 'how high.'"

"And when I say 'kiss my shoes,' or 'suck my cock?'"

Stringer doesn't blink. "You saying that?"

"This ain't a game, String." The light of the television flickers on Avon's face. _Oh, daddy, harder. Fuck my tight little pussy._

"It's the game. Your soldiers can't be doubting you when you call a hit." He casts his eyes down to Avon's shoes. Black sneakers, new enough that the laces are still clean. "So you need me to kiss your shoes, I'll kiss your shoes."

"Then you better bend down, bitch."

Stringer presses his palms to the rug and lets Avon push him down, lowers himself until he can fit his lips to the place at the toe where the sole curves up. It smells of plastic and cordite and sweat.

When he looks up again, Avon has his cock out of his jeans, cradled in his palm. "You a cocksucker, String?" he asks as he pumps himself. He never once breaks eye contact, not even when the woman in the video starts to scream like she's being impaled.

"You know I ain't."

"Me, neither."

Avon raises his hand from Stringer's shoulder and brushes the knuckles against his cheek. Stringer wonders for a moment what Avon would do, if he canted his head into that touch. He doesn't move; he hardly dares to breathe. The ghost of his breath on Avon's skin might break the moment.

When Avon pulls him close, though, Stringer lets himself be guided to that heavy cock and takes every inch of it in.


End file.
